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[sejpdw]

'The question to be asked now is, how did these prehistoric animals survive in their island environment?'

Q : In my opinion, the above sentence is not grammatically right, because the word order is how verb subjective, even though it has indirect question. In short, 'how these prehistoric animals survived....period(not question mark)' or ' ...to be asked now is : How....environment?' seems OK. What's your opinion?

[CP]

It is correct as is.

It would be all right to capitalize how as How, since it is the beginning of the sentence that a person would say if voicing the question that is to be asked now.

And it is customary to have the comma after is, as it is written in the original sentence. I was taught that you do not put a colon after the verb to be, as your alternative suggestion has it.

Other ways to write it:

Here is what we need to ask now: How did these prehistoric animals survive in their island environment?

Now we need to ask how these prehistoric animals survived in their island environment.
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